Sunday, November 04, 2007

Greg Berlanti Describes Strike Atmosphere

ABC's "it" producer Greg Berlanti explains in the latest issue of L.A. Times the atmosphere on the set of the dramas "Brothers & Sisters," "Dirty Sexy Money" and "Eli Stone" his company produces and what he will do to keep these shows on air as long as possible.

The openly gay producer who has just been announced as the director for the upcoming "Green Lantern" movie says he is going to work through the weekend to put finishing touches on as many scripts as possible so they could be produced despite strike.

Berlanti Television and ABC studio have already filmed 10 episodes of each show. At least three more scripts for each show have been written. If these episodes are filmed before the holidays, the shows could stay on air through the end of January.

Episode #10 of both "Brothers & Sisters" and "Dirty Sexy Money" is a Christmas episode and will air in early December. The shows are as always pre-empted during the holidays. The final 3 episodes could then air in January.

Berlanti says: "If a strike happens, no one ever wants it to happen, I want the people that work for me to survive it."

The uber-producer also says it has been hard to focus on that since people are taking pictures down and acting as if it were end of the season, rather than half-time:

"It’s been a really hard couple of weeks with the combination of trying to do more work than usual, suffering the feeling that you don’t have any control over the situation and there’s a lot of gray area on certain things and no one really has a lot of information"

Berlanti concludes: "It hasn’t been pleasant. And then there’s sense of the impending strike and what that can bring too. None of it is good."

"Dirty Sexy Money" is pre-empted this Wednesday for "Country Music Awards," and "Brothers & Sisters" is pre-empted November 18 for "American Music Awards."